A Brief History of Natural Citizenship

The Constitution & Presidential Eligibility

The legitimacy of the presidency of Barack Obama is predicated on the assumption that he was constitutionally eligible for the office at the time of his election. While he fulfilled the 2nd and 3rd requirements for the office, (the requirements of age [maturity], and residency [familiarity & attachment] ) a fallacy has been unquestioningly embraced that he also fulfilled the elements of the first and primary requirement; namely that he be a “natural born citizen”.

That fallacy is the result of an erroneous substitution of a tangential circumstance (location of birth) in place of the oldest tradition of all human societies, which is membership acquired from member parents.
This error is the result of the historical circumstances of the American British colonies, which were not founded as equal members of the King’s domain, but rather as properties which were outside of the umbrella of legal rights that had been established through centuries of “push-back” against royal despotism, beginning with the Magna Carta.
This inequitable relationship with the mother country was not made manifest until England was stuck with the large costs of waging the war against the French & Indians in America. England was loath to bare the costs to defend others so far away while they (the colonists) escaped from paying a sizable share. And so began a campaign to squeeze money from the colonies even while they were given no representation in Parliament nor before the King’s counselors. This revealed that the attitude of England was that the colonies were the property of England, and its subjects were not co-equals, having the rights of English freemen.

The view that the colonists were not equal members of the British nation, but rather were mere property of the King, changed how the inhabitants were connected to the government. As subjects of England, with all the rights of freemen, they would have had to have been treated differently than if
they were merely foreign human property of the Crown. While English society had gained many legal rights over time, they had not escaped from
the prevailing political-religious philosophy of “The Divine Right of Kings” on which the legitimacy of all the monarchs of the “Holy Roman Empire” was based. Under the extension of that philosophy, the aristocracy of the landed gentry and the nobility viewed all off-spring of the plant domain, animal domain, and human domain (seeds, beasts, and serfs) as being the property of the land owner by the fact of coming into this world on his property.
That principle was known as “jus soli”, or “the law of soil”. Children of foreigners who were born within the King’s domain were deemed to be his subjects by his and judicial and Parliamentary decree since their parents had abandoned their previous country and joined that of the King. They were not natural born subjects since their parents were not subjects of the King but were subjects of a foreign monarch. But since they were born on his land, he had a right to claim them as his subjects.

But a different principle applied for those with wealth, -those with an estate, in particular the nobility. They were not viewed as the subjects of the King because of their English birth location, but because they were born to English fathers. They inherited from their fathers their English nationality, including their rights & responsibilities as British subjects, and that principle is known as “jus sanguinis” or “law of blood”.
Since the colonies were the property of the King, its inhabitants were viewed as belonging to the mother country by jus soli, not jus sanguinis, because they were born on the land of the owner and were therefore the property of the owner (England and her Monarch). That is how the feudal estate, or plantation-based idea of native birth came to be seen as the principle that bestowed membership in some American colonies. It’s concept was; “We were born on the land, we belong to the land owner (the British-owned colony where one was a subject) rather than “We are citizens because we were born as citizens by being born to citizens, and we are no ones property.”
Most of the founding fathers realized that the model based on membership by descent had to be adopted and the colonial model of Monarch–subjects, or Lord of the Shire–serfs/ Plantation Master–slaves had to be abandoned, but some were not cognizant of the natural membership model because they had spent their entire lives under the colonial model and it was the only tradition that they knew (and which had existed for well over a century). They thought that citizenship was a result of where one is born, rather than to whom one is born.

The term “natural born citizen” is composed of three words which represent a different historical reality. Before understanding what they mean as a whole, one must first be clear what they mean individually.
“Natural” refers to the natural realm. “Citizen” refers to the political realm. “Born” refers to birth, which embodies two distinct legal concepts,
-human ownership, and birthright inheritance, -both of which relate to the source of group membership. These concepts serve as a bridge to connect the natural realm with the political realm, and combine them all into an indivisible unity.

Let’s begin with “natural”. It’s referenced because it embodies a natural principle that is directly adaptable to the political realm. That principle has its earliest reference in the book of Genesis and the story of the creation of life, about which it was written that each species reproduces after its own kind, -like produces like. Species do not intermingle and produce off-spring that are not like themselves, rather, they are identical.

That is the natural principle behind the use of the word “natural”. A natural born anything is going to be the same as that which produced it. The analogy in the political realm is that citizens produce citizens of the same nationality. Any combining of nationalities would not be politically natural.
For example, if a mare (female horse) is mated with a jackass (male donkey) the off-spring is not a natural born horse, nor a natural born donkey, but instead is a mule, which is not a natural creature since it’s sterile.
In the human realm, if an Eskimo woman becomes pregnant by a black African man, her off-spring will not be a natural born Eskimo, nor a natural born African. It won’t be a natural born anything other than the over-all classification of human.
That, along with cultural shock, is the reason why inter-racial marriage has historically been viewed as undesirable. The off-spring is an outsider because it is not a natural member of either of the groups of the parents that produced it.

Similarly, in the political realm, if, during the Civil War, a Northern male had fathered a child with a Southern female, the off-spring would not have been a “natural born Yankee”, nor a “natural born Rebel”, but a nondescript hybrid. Which brings up the related fact that connects to the word “born”.
While “born” includes the legal implications of place of birth, it also relates to “natural” in that it is the vehicle that provides one with membership in their natural group. One is a member of an Eskimo tribe by by being born into the tribe. Without birth to tribal members, one will not be a member of the group. So it is with birth into the political realm. One is a member by birth to members. Without member parents, one is not a natural member of the group, i.e., not a natural citizen.

If one’s father is not a member of the tribe, then one’s acceptance by the tribe is dependent on their adopted rules, -and how strict they chose to be about maintaining pure-blood membership.
In the political realm, one’s citizenship is dependent on rules (naturalization law) adopted to deal with such hybrid or hyphenated off-spring. Those rules have to be adopted not to define those who are natural members, but to provide membership for those who are not natural members, (but might be considered half-blood members).
The word “born” also relates to an ancient legal tradition that is thousands of years old. It’s known as “Primogeniture”, which is the right of the first-born male to inherit the estate of the parents (which of course required that there be an estate, i.e., wealth). None of the other siblings were born with such a right. It was the firstborn’s right regardless of who disliked it or him, and was known as his birthright.
Any inheritance received by his siblings was based on the parents’ feelings towards the other sons, while the daughters were not a part of the inheritance because they became members of the family of their husbands. By primogeniture, the family name and estate would be secured for as long as the wealth was retained and the male heir produced a surviving male off-spring. In England, Prince Charles, and his first-born son William were born with the birthright to the throne of England. Their siblings do not have that right.

In the political realm, ones “birthright” is to inherit the citizenship/ membership of the parents. It is a right that they are born with and is theirs automatically, requiring no law to make it so because the tradition is older than any written law. That is why birthright citizenship is not even included in the Constitution, nor is the right to life, or self-defense, or to marry, because they were understood by all to be “a given”, -an unalienable right so obvious as to not need to be stated.

“Born” also relates to the established authority of the group or nation within whose boundaries one is born, -the land where one is raised and comes to be a full-fledged member as an adult. Historically, one’s devotion to one’s county/ state/ nation sprang from it being one’s home, (though that relationship has been greatly altered by urbanization and impermanent residency).

But most peoples have a sense of national identify because of their shared history, language, culture, and perhaps religion. So place of birth alone, while not instilling national allegiance and a sense of citizenship, does result in the life experience that produces those feelings. Those feelings, in times of crisis, result in a sense of national unity, and therefore there is a natural tendency to simplistically assume that those feelings are the result of place of birth, while that view completely ignores to whom one was born and the acculturation experience of being raised in a cohesive society.

Hence, since place of birth (when viewed in a vacuum) seems to be an adequate historical explanation for a sense of national connection, (or nationalism) , the executive and judicial branches of the federal government have erroneously settled on it as the simple, sole criteria for ascribing citizenship (-which would not be a problem if we had a second Canada on our Southern border, with its same wealth, language, education system and birth rate).
The founding fathers and authors of the Constitution understood the national danger that would threaten the survival of the union of the uniting states of North America if the commander-in-chief of the United States Army, Navy, and Marines felt a greater devotion to the Crown, or to the British Empire, than to the federation of the American states.
The only way possible to prevent that was to make all dual-citizens and naturalized citizens ineligible to the office of the President, while allowing them to occupy any other federal office (-except the Vice-Presidency). The way that they imposed that limitation was through adding the requirement that the President be a natural born citizen. Those words come as the sum of all of the above historical references. They combine to mandate the following:

1. The President must be a purely natural American via birth to Americans. He must not be a statutory hybrid half-&-half dual citizen but a native member of the national group.

2. His citizenship must be by birthright and not by statute. He must possess the unalienable right of citizenship by inheritance from citizen parents.

3. From birth he must have never had any taint of family subjection to any foreign power through the natural connection to a foreign father.

4. From birth there must have never been any possibility of foreign allegiance through being born to and (especially) raised by a foreign father in a foreign country after being born on U.S. soil.

United States Constitution
Article II, Section I, paragraph 5 reads:

“No person except a natural born Citizen,..
shall be eligible to the Office of the President,…”
Our current President knowingly ran for and and was elected to an office for which he is not eligible. And no one in a position of authority or public influence realizes that fact, or they do realize it but are unwilling, or not allowed to discuss it openly.
It seems highly probable that the owner of Fox News (along with its competition) has muzzled all of his on-air personnel since they will not even broach the subject. They are free to oppose the President for any reason and any policy that they find objectionable, but they do not, and presumably cannot, cross the line into the eligibility territory.
There must be a reason for that other than shear ignorance. Hopefully they aren’t that ignorant. If they are, then we’re in even bigger trouble than if they’ve been muzzled. Honestly can be adopted in an instant, while being knowledgeable takes time. Or perhaps they view the issue as a hornet nest (or killer-bee hive) that is best left un-kicked.

The down side of awakening an American awareness of the issue may be disastrous to any hope of national political civility which is already being sorely tested by the dire circumstances of the national debt and deficit crisis and the magnitude of spending cuts required to right our financial ship of state.

It appears likely that our illegitimate President will not succeed in being re-elected, but it would have been far better for our country if enough people had realized the truth and moved to defend the Constitution by preventing him from even being accepted as the Democratic Party 2012 nominee.

The leaders of the Democratic Party deliberately avoided declaring Obama as being the constitutionally eligible candidate of their party in 2008 by removing the wording that had historically stated that fact regarding previous candidates. This demonstrates that they know he is not constitutionally eligible but they care not one bit about fidelity to the document that they have disingenuously sworn a solemn oath to defend.

The Oath of Allegiance taken when sworn into office does not require one to preserve, protect and defend the United States, nor its people, nor its government, nor its economic system, but to defend only one thing, and that thing is the Constitution itself. It appears that the greatest risk to it is not foreign, but domestic.

The progressive/socialist/humanist/ agenda supersedes fidelity to even the most fundamental law of our nation, and even views it as a dangerous threat to its programs.
While pushing compassionate social programs, they also push massive and wasteful spending and social engineering programs which corrupt the political process because that “buys” them loyal voters who will keep them in power.

To defend their ideology and its pervasive presence in modern American life, they will lie and deceive by any means necessary to protect what they have already achieved and to gain even greater power. They will also resort to forging birth documents to deceive those who are contented being deceived.

Only the fiscal conservatives, and Libertarians see the damage that has been done and are resisting the ever expanding tentacles of federal power, while most of the country is still asleep, -too busy enjoying their sporting events, legal and illegal gambling, fabulous vacations and cruises, booze and drugs, video games, HDTV and internet entertainment, precious vehicles, music collections and TV shows.

But the days are coming in which everyone will have to choose sides. And it is not very far off. Which side will you choose? And when you finally do, will it already be too late to make a difference?

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About arnash“When you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.” - Mark Twain - Politicians and diapers - change 'em often, for the same reason.
"Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other." Ronald Reagan
"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views."
William F. Buckley, Jr.
“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell
The people are the masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it. Abraham Lincoln “Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their
behalf.” - George Orwell
“Satan will use a lake of truth to hide a pint of poison”.

2 Responses to A Brief History of Natural Citizenship

Your words should accompany all of the court cases now in process, and should be required reading of all our citizens so that the meaning of “natural born citizen” expressed in Article II, Section I, clause 5 of our constitution is understood to be a “legal term of art”.